The relationship between team ability and home advantage in the English football league system

The existence of home advantage (HA) has been found in a variety of team sports including football. There is a paucity of research on the relationship between team ability and HA in domestic football leagues and the findings of previous studies are inconclusive. Using longitudinal data from the top four football divisions in England, this study investigates the influence of team ability on the HA of teams. The data collected for this study spans 24 seasons from 1995/96 to 2018/19 and includes 48,864 matches from the English Premier League (n=9,120), the Championship (n=13,248), League One (n=13,248) and League Two (n=13,248). Team ability was interpreted in two ways: (1) the division in which teams play; and, (2) their league table position within each division. For both the divisional and positional analysis, HA was calculated as the ratio of home points to total points achieved by teams in each season under review. Evidence of a statistically significant HA was found in all four divisions and for teams of all abilities within each division. Small but statistically significant differences in HA were observed between divisions and between high, moderate and low ability teams within divisions

Thigh-length compression stockings and DVT after stroke

Controversy exists as to whether neoadjuvant chemotherapy improves survival in patients with invasive bladder cancer, despite randomised controlled trials of more than 3000 patients. We undertook a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the effect of such treatment on survival in patients with this disease

Macrophages behavior on different NIPAm-based thermoresponsive substrates

Thermoresponsive materials and surfaces are widely used in cell culture applications. There is a lot of research work employing thermoresponsive materials with various structure and compositions. However, little is known about the immunological response to the thermoresponsive materials. Macrophage-like transformed murine cell line RAW264.7 was selected as it is a widely used standard model for immune activation analysis. This study proposes to compare the effects of thermoresponsive films with various compositions on macrophage cells. Thermoresponsive materials are a useful utility as a non-enzymatic harvesting system for tissue culture. As RAW264.7 cells are difficult to remove from the substrate by enzymatic methods we also explored the possibility to use thermoresponsive materials for the macrophage cultivation. Spin coating and solvent casting was used to produce films of N-isopropylacrylamide-based polymers from the nanometer to micrometer range. Successful cell adhesion and proliferation was highly dependent on the thickness and composition of the coating. RAW264.7 cells were successfully detached from the coatings upon temperature reduction. Furthermore, results indicate that the RAW264.7 cells remained inactivated as cell secreted cytokine remained at a low level and the surface receptor profile of RAW264.7 was not altered when cells were detached in this manner.Peer Reviewe